Monday, March 31, 2014

Polaris, Rest in Peace

Final POLARIS ReportToday marks the formal end of the POLARIS Consortium. The Consortium of university and Government researchers created a geophysical infrastructure in which arrays of stations equipped with seismometers, accelerometers, magnetometers, infrasound sensors, geodetic GPS receivers and other devices were installed and operated all over the world, for about 14 years, and provided live data for geophysical research.The remains of the stations that were originally part of POLARIS are now operated by various Canadian universities or divisions of the Natural Resources Canada. Appendices A to D show the distribution of the geophysical stations, their current operator or custodian and the original ownership of their equipment. Negotiations are currently underway to resolve the future of equipment that are owned by one institution but are deployed at stations owned by others.The POLARIS Consortium also owned and operated two types of magnetotelluric (MT) equipmentmanufactured by Narod and Phoenix Geophysical companies. The Narod MT equipment is now on loan to the IRIS Consortium and, after upgrades, will be available to researchers for future field deployments. The Phoenix MT equipment is still actively used by a small community of Canadian researchers and negotiations are currently underway between Carleton University and the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) to allow for GSC to manage the deployments of this equipment for the next five years.The POLARIS Website, www.polarisnet.ca is now closed to the public but some components of the site are still available at www.polarisnet.ca/gsc.

Such fond memories when I was in on this at the beginning. There was a lot of money handed out, which made our seismic monitoring better than anything in the Eastern US. This was a program for new equipment, and I am confident I can put on enough pressure to keep the instruments lit in Ontario. :) Ok, maybe it isn't all me....